Conventional fixed-wing aircraft use a propeller or jet engine to move forward, creating a breeze over the wing which, in turn, creates lift. Under favourable circumstances, this lift is sufficient to get the plane off the ground.

VTOL aircraft come in two main types. The first is the helicopter,
which swings two or more long, thin wings around in a circle. This creates the necessary breeze and, hence, the lift. Helicopters, though, are manifestly unsafe.

The second type of VTOL aircraft uses nozzles to direct the thrust of a jet engine downward, pushing the plane up. This works, but is horrendously noisy and expensive.

Fortunately, MaxCo. has devised a third option which combines the disadvantages of the first with the drawbacks of the second.

Our prototype looks somewhat like a normal aeroplane, but with two differences. First, the wings are more or less symmetric front-to-back, with the bulge in the middle of rather than toward the leading edge. Second, the jet engines (of which there are two on each wing) are mounted unconventionally. The inboard engines are mounted on pylons well ahead of, and just above, the wing. The outboard engines are mounted well behind, and again just above the wing. The outboard engines also back-to-front, which worries a lot of people.

When all four engines are powered up, the result is a phenomenal breeze across the upper surface of the wing. This breeze runs backward across the inner part of each wing, and forward across the outer part. The forward and backward thrusts cancel eachother out, so the plane does not move forward or backward. It does, however, rise vertically due to the air passing over the wing surface.

Once at a suitable altitude, the back-to-front outboard engines are throttled back, and the plane moves forward in the usual way. Of course, throttling back the inboard engines will cause the plane to move backward, but some people like that sort of thing.

This is not how a wing works. An airofoil, when forwardness
is caused to it, introduces a difference in air pressure
between the top bit and the bottom bit  the bulgingness
makes it happen. The air takes a lot longer to get across
the top bit than it does the bottom. Consequently, the air
that has passed across the top arrives at a later time, at
the same time as the air from the bottom. This difference
in pressure causes lift (or elevator if you're foreign).

One way of improving this idea, hencethen, is to have all
the engines pointing inward at the fuselage. This would
provide a dramatic safety improvement in the case of four
simultaneous catastrophic engine failures (a euphemism for
when an aero engine emits engine fragments at an insanely
high speed, in the direction of the cabin and passengers).

// for when an aero engine emits engine fragments at an insanely high speed, in the direction of the cabin and passengers //

In an axial-flow turbojet, a catastrophic failure typically results in high-velocity debris being ejected at right angles to the engine. Relatively little debris is ejected rearwards, and rarely at high velocity.

The really hard way to do VTOL is to use hot air balloon technology, whatever that is, but souper it up to the max. Megamontgolfierisation. Faster, more powerful, more impressive, and more of it. But smaller.